Appeal to civil society, the government, the diplomatic corps and interested persons!

Appeal to civil society, the government, the diplomatic corps and interested persons!

We, representatives of the Georgian media, regard the Tbilisi City Hall project “Promotion of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises” as having nothing to do with the development of small and medium sized business and creating jobs. It is directed at the destruction of the existing system of distribution of print media and poses a real danger to the free media. We want to emphatically note that the government has repeatedly tried to get the free press under control during the last years.

In these days, some of the newspaper kiosks have been forced to seize their activities, under the pretext of holding a tender. The last moves by the Tbilisi City Hall are already impacting the circulation numbers of Georgian print media. All of these create serious financial problems for the magazines and newspapers and hinder the exercise of freedom of speech to reach the public.

We regard these steps as a decision counter to the country’s development, the public interest, the media and democracy.

We, the undersigned call for and demand of the Tbilisi City Hall to stop the steps made against the print media. We demand that the tender under the cover of so-called ‘healthy competition’ is not applied to kiosks where there traditionally has been sold newspapers for years; accordingly, that they remain islands of freedom in Tbilisi where citizen will be able to obtain information and form their own opinion about ongoing events in the country.